GoPayment Goes ‘Freemium,’ Gets Back in the Mobile Payment Game

Intuit’s mobile payment service, GoPayment, which allows users to accept credit card payments on their smart phones, is trying to swipe its way back into the spotlight this week by going “freemium.”

GoPayment is a downloadable mobile app that works in conjunction with a credit card reader to allow small businesses to accept credit card transactions via their smart phones. The service makes it cheap and easy for anyone from a vendor at a farmer’s market to a babysitter to a plumber to accept plastic on the go. By using a service like GoPayment, small businesses can give their customers the option of paying by card without having to invoice the payment or incur the hefty fees that usually come with accepting cards.

So here’s the deal: in an effort to hamper fledgling competition from the likes of Square, PayPal and others, GoPayment is offering a free credit-card reader and no monthly fees for those who sign up by mid-February. The offer is actually more beneficial to businesses who don’t process a high volume of credit cards, since the company has slightly altered its rates in order to compensate for the lack of a monthly fee. This means that, as appealing as it sounds, the new deal isn’t right for everyone. And if you are a small business accepting a lot of credit cards, you may want to stick with the monthly fees plan.

So how do the rates stack up to Square? The answer is that they’re about the same. But aside from the fees, there are a few key differences. While neither company supports absolutely every phone, GoPayment does boast compatibility with a wider variety of phones (like the BlackBerry).

Although Square is well-known as the sleek device created by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, it had some serious security and hardware issues last summer. And while it appears that they’ve been resolved, these were some crucial flubs that may permanently cripple the startup, or at least lose some consumer trust.